I was shaking my head when I read the letter from Sylvia Posch. First of all, she states she does not belong to any political party. But as you read the letter, she is saying everything that the Conservatives all repeat.
They get their marching orders from Stephen Harper. First of all, Pierre Elliot Trudeau has not been in power since 1984. Now that is 30 years ago, therefore, any argument the Conservatives or their cronies use in reference to Trudeau is irrelevant.
She went on to say that Mr. Harper has built up the military. What? Where did she get this information from? Wow. I am a veteran. When Mr. Trudeau left power, I was in. We had cut our navy down from about 30 ships to 22 navy vessels or so. We still had the Sea King helicopters, which at that time were more than 20 years old.
They were frail and old then. Today, the Canadian navy has the same Sea King helicopters.
Now they are 50 years old. If not for the men and women of the military repairing them and keeping them flying, we would not have helicopters on the ships. Where are the new helicopters that Harper keeps promising?
They are not bought or built nor delivered. In the 1970s under Pierre Trudeau, he ordered and delivered not only the 280 class destroyers, all eight, I believe, but he also ordered in the 1980s, the frigates.
They were delivered much later after he was out of office.
For the most part, the 280s are all gone, except one. That one is in the Baltic Sea currently. The frigates, except three, are all tied up now.
The HMCS Toronto, HMCS Calgary and HMCS Regina are the only ships operational. Some of the frigates are being refitted, but that is a cyclical part of a ships life. What has Harper done? He had a photo-op to announce a plan to build replacements for these ships. Well that was many years ago.
To this day, no plans have been drawn up. Not a stitch of metal has even been purchased for the new ships. The prices are skyrocketing and there is no renewals on the foreseeable future. Our two supply ships are, for all intents and purposes dead.
The Preserver was decommissioned. The Protector was disabled by a fire. We have no supply ships.
Under his reign, Harper has taken the once second largest navy in the world down to nothing. We do however have the oldest active military vessel in the world.
The HMCS Algonquin is more than 40 years old. Plus, he has been waging a war, behind the scenes against the same people that he so easily sends into harms way. His battle against the veterans is inexcusable. He sends them into combat, either on the ground or in the air or by sea.
Then once they do his bidding, he forgets about what they did and does very little for them when they need him. That is until they have had enough and go public.
Then he has to start damage control. So please, before you give kudos to Harper, get your facts straight.
Do some research and then you will see what kind of man he actually is.
Michael Olsen
Vernon
